Lifecycle of a Business

EPISODE 4: MATURITY

So we’ve reached that slightly ambiguous stage of the life cycle known as middle age. Of all the lifecycle stages that have been covered in art and media art and literature, this one is probably the most neglected. We rarely hear about what it’s like to simply keep on keeping on…

Until today! On this podcast. I’m personally fascinated by middle age… How you get perspective when you’re in the middle of the path. How you define success for yourself… and when you start to chill out a bit more.

Today, we’re going to hear about a woman who founded a company a decade ago, and hear about her path to a solid identity for her company.

This is episode 4: Maturity.

For this story, I called up Jess Mah, where she was sitting in a bank in San Francisco.

Jess: I am Jess Mah. I am the founder and CEO of indinero and I’ve been working on this for 10 years.

Jess is only 29 years old... So you may be wondering why she is featured in a podcast about middle age. Well, her business career started early…at the age of 12.

As a tween, she owned a server management company. She operated it out of her childhood bedroom, which had no posters. The only decorations were five lit up homemade computers. At this stage, she even had a few employees.

Jess: And they were random people on the internet I met. I’d never met them in person.

Bianca: And they were adults and you were 12?

Jess: Yeah they were adults. They had no idea how old I was and then at some point I’d confess how old I was and it’d be a little awkward. But yeah that’s how I started.

She was kind of a loner at school… so this business was her primary occupation.

Jess: It was very stressful and I was constantly anxious all the time and we had horrible cash flow issues. And if you’re a 13 years old, no bank will lend you money. So it was very, very hard for me to build and scale that business, like the faster we grew the more cash it sucked. So I ended up just selling everything actually to a customer.

The main thing she took away from this business experience:

Jess: Finances and cash flow were a big problem for me and one day I’d want to figure out how to fix that problem.

This led to her next business idea, at age 19. Indinero.

Indinero is a software that Jessica built to help manage your finances. She had kind of radical approach to her company. She wasn’t interested in taking a lot of investor money. She wanted something more long term… to step her feet onto the solid soil of business maturity.

Jess: We’ve raised relatively very little money because we’ve never needed a lot of money. And I always felt that it was just silicon valley ego. That led people were raising excessive amounts of capital. And also I want to build a company that can be around for decades to come. I’m not interested in building a company that will just sell for a lot of money in a year or two or three.

Over the next seven years she worked insanely long hours. She pivoted the company five times. She and her co-founder were roommates, co-workers, and practically siblings.

Jess: We’d just be stressed all the time so I would complain to him, he would complain to me and we lived together also for almost 10 years like we’d have bedrooms next to each other.

They worked on their relationship, for years, and even went to marriage counseling together. But in the end, they went their separate ways.

And when he left, things felt very different.

Jess: I think I actually grew into being a much stronger and more effective leader when I didn’t have him as a crutch. And I didn’t have to subconsciously subconsciously say I wonder what Andy will think.

Jess: when I was the CEO without a founder and just running everything on my own, I felt empowered to make much bolder, bigger moves for the company and I think that was really important for us to get to the next level. Not that andy was a bad partner, he was a great partner. But I knew for myself that being a solo founder is more my cup of tea and I think a lot of people are scared to start a company without a co-founder because they think they’re gonna be alone and lonely.

Through talking to Jess, I realized that business maturity didn’t come from any financial marker, or a five or ten year marker… it came from surviving the adventures of youth, and coming out more confident on the other side.

After Andy left, Jess took full responsibility for the company, and started making changes. She brought on a new executive team, added more remote employees, and doubled down their financial discipline. For her, maturity has been a mindset. It’s being less stressed out…working less… and feeling like you have ownership and control over your company.

Jess: Yet so over time I got better at sleeping 8 hours got better at working out. I personally feel happier and more fulfilled now than probably ever before. And I think it’s less to do about where the company’s at and more to do with just how I feel energetically.

Now the company has 220 full time people, and it will probably grow to 300 by the end of the year. They’re doing in the tens of millions in revenue, and they have people working in ten different cities. But even ten years in, it can still feel like they’re proving themselves…

Jess: I mean yeah we’re doing really well revenue wise and we will be profitable in the millions of dollars this year. It’s kind of weird sharing that on a podcast but I feel like it’s really important to be open about this kind of stuff because I know when I listen to stuff I always wonder how I wonder how much money they make or how well they’re doing. And for us even though we are performing as a company and investors are happy and our customers are happy I still have a ton of problems in the company.

Jess: I’ll lie in bed and think oh my god like what if we get wiped out by the next innovative company that outrages us because we’ve raised so little money. And I worry about company culture because now that we’re not headquartered in San Francisco. And we had people all over the map. It’s much harder to keep a cohesive company where everyone knows what’s going on and where people and body the values that I started the company with. Needless to say, I’m happier today. I’m definitely less restless at night but I still have a ton of anxiety about the company because I want it to succeed. And now the expectations are higher like we want to be public viable in the next two years. Meaning you know in the hundreds of millions in revenue.

In the middle of the night, some lay awake at night, thinking about love, about adventure… but jess told me she thinks about all the companies in the world… and all the problems of all the companies in the world…and dreams of fixing them.

Jess: Accounting and tax: those are big problems but they have every business has even more problems. They have insurance problems financing and debt problems and you know payroll and I.T. And H.R. and they’re just so many problems that every business has and I want to solve all these problems for every entrepreneur in the world. And to think about how far away from my vision and dream we are feels a little daunting at times and I think accounting and tax is really just the starting point of everything else that I’d like to do. Being less directly financially driven and being more like impact driven is really helpful for making it so that I want to work on this for another 10 years.

Jess: My vision for the company is so large like we want to have 10x the number of customers we have and I want to create all these other products and services so that we create 10x the value for our customers. I want our customers to get so much more from us.

Bianca: When you say 10x, do you mean 10 times?

Jess: Yeah, I want to create 10x the amount of value for my customers than what we’re doing today and then when we 10x it, I want to 10x it again.

This long-term steady growth toward your goals, this is maturity. Lifecycle of a business is a podcast from mailchimp, produced in partnership with missing pieces. It’s hosted by me, Bianca Giaever, reported by Avery Thompson, executive produced by Ari Kuschnir, Kate Oppenheim and Brian Latt. Music by Stellwagen Symphonette. Our line producer is Vicky Illk. The music in this episode is by the band Lullatone.